JUST AS THEY predict the weather, farmers’ almanac editors might have easily forecast my obsession with almanacs. Descended as I am not from farmers but from mill workers, maids, and insurance salesmen, it makes all the more sense: farmers’ almanacs have not primarily served farmers for quite some time. My grandfather, the insurance salesman, hung a framed reprint of the title page of Poor Richard’s Almanack alongside copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his split-level home in Stoughton, Massachusetts.

Philosophers aren’t the only ones who love wisdom. Everyone, philosopher or not, loves her own wisdom: the wisdom she has or takes herself to have. Whatdistinguishes the philosopher is loving the wisdom she doesn’t have. Philosophy is, therefore, a form of humility: being aware that you lack what is of supremeimportance. There may be no human being who exemplified this form of humility more perfectly than Socrates. It is no coincidence that he is considered the first philosopher within the Western canon.